Kael remembered the look in her eyes when he tore her away. But he didn’t regret it. He couldn’t.
He’d sent the order with a single glance. Take him below. The noble would suffer.
He reveled in the bastards screams for hours, after he left Maris in her rooms. How dare he feel so emboldened to touch something beyond his reach.
The dungeon floor was slick with dark blood, not just from the lashes and the brands — but from slow beautiful torture Kael had unleashed. Each strike was a breath exhaled, a weight lifted, the rage bleeding out one blow at a time.
His methods had been well worth their time, the noble had offered a surprising confession. He wasn’t just an opportunistic groping drunk with wandering hands. He was a spy.
Kael didn't bother to hide the satisfaction gleaming in his eyes — finding a spy this quickly felt like a fortune smiling with fangs.
The ruined son of a crumbling distance Nythran and Calanthean bloodline, drowning in debt inherited from his father’s disgrace. King Alarik of Calanthe had offered him reprieve in exchange for secrets. Vices. Patterns. The tendencies of a Kael being too dark to predict.
“He said… report what pleases you,” the male had sobbed, sagging in his chains. “What you desire. What weaknesses you show. The girl… he wanted to know her significance — and what purpose she serves you. If she begins to exhibit traces of magic… ”
Kael had listened in silence and when the confession was over, he sliced the nobles throat.
He watched the panic settle in the males eyes, witnessed the life drain from his body. He didn't bother unchaining the corpse, no he left it to rot, cold rage still simmering beneath his skin.
In the war chamber, Kael stared down at the map of Achyron, the continent cursed by the gods, carved by war, and now bleeding unspeakable terrors through the Veil that once protected them all. He touched the borderlands between Nythra and Calanthe, a ruined land mass torn from war and ruin.
There had never been peace between their kingdoms. Not since the gods turned their backs.
Nythra, Kael’s kingdom, was once blessed by Vaerith, the god of flame. Its people had harnessed the fire for life, forging great cities and harvests with heat from the ground. But when the nightbound were born, Vaerith turned his gift to punishment. Now, the ground cracked with blight. Firestorms ravaged the outer villages. The land burned from within.
Calanthe, Alarik’s realm, had been Thaleia’s pride, goddess of water and bloom. Its waters were once sacred, known to heal wounds and extend life. Now, the rivers ran black and poison-slick, birthing plagues and madness. The western seas along its edge never calm, always raging against the coasts and cliffs— pulling the land away with each recession of waves. Thaleia’s vengeance had turned beauty into rot.
And the Veil?
Once spun by the gods to shield the mortal realm from the horrors between worlds — nightmares, chaos, the forgotten beasts of divine war, the Veil had begun to fray. Where it wore thinnest veilspawn crept in like smoke through cracked glass. And the curses made them different.
In Nythra, the terrors came in fire and famine, skeletal wolves, burning beasts, creatures that devoured harvest and soul alike.
In Calanthe, they took the shape of illusions, lovers turned betrayers, children lured into rivers and the sea, entire villages waking to their own mirrored horrors.
The two lands were broken in opposite ways and both believed it was the nightbound who ensured the gods’ wrath never lifted.
Kael’s grip on the obsidian table tightened.
Corin and Riven stood behind him, silent shadows of loyalty.
“Our report indicate Alarik’s seer is already spinning stories,” Riven muttered. “They say she saw something. A thread. A fire that bleeds into moonlight. They’re watching your every move they know something has shifted here with the girls’ presence.”
“He should be careful where he gazes,” Kael said flatly. “The darkness might gaze back.”
Corin added, “They want to know why you took a mortal. Why she was paraded at your side and then marked as untouchable.”
Kael gave a humorless smile.
“Because she is untouchable.”
But even that wasn’t the truth. The real truth was harder to name.
Corin stood by the doorway, arms folded.
Kael let out a long breath. “He wants to know why I took her.”
“The fool assumes there was a reason. And yet you're still trying to find one,” Riven added from the shadowed side of the room — his face turned ashen at the realization at what his words implied about his king.
